Trend Watch: Employers Asking Candidates For Facebook Passwords

Recent reports suggest employers are asking to access potential employees' Facebook profiles, and the ACLU and lawmakers alike are seeking to ban the practice.

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There are probably very few people you'd be willing to give your Facebook password too. And those probably don't include your boss.

But as social networks are increasingly intertwined with our real lives, there seems to be a growing trend  companies are asking for interviewees' Facebook passwords.

The Associated Press points to Justin Basset, a New York City statistician who recently withdrew his application with a company that, at the end of the interview, asked him to log onto his Facebook profile so the interviewer could take a look.

The practice is called "shoulder surfing," and compared to flat out giving your password to a potential employer, it's actually considered a compromise. "Shoulder surfing" provides that an applicant logs into his or her profile and clicks through photos, wall posts, comments, and items that might be hidden behind privacy controls. The practice caught the ire of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) earlier this month when news broke that the Maryland Department of Corrections (DOC) was using "shoulder surfing" to screen candidates.

But it wasn't just used with unfamiliar applicants. Long-time employee Robert Collins was returning to the company after a brief leave of absence related to the death of his mother. During a reinstatement interview, he was asked for his login information. He said he was so dumbstruck, he complied.

"Here I am, a U.S. citizen who hasn't broken any laws, who hasn't committed any crimes, and here I am having a prospective  well, not prospective in my case  an employer, looking at my personal communications, my personal posts, my personal identifiable information," Collins said in a video from the ACLU. "It is an absolute and total invasion and total overreach on their part."

The ACLU has since responded to the news in a blog post, pointing to the federal law that prevents others from peeping into your snail mail.

"It's an invasion of privacy for private employers to insist on looking at people's private Facebook pages as a condition of employment or consideration in an application process," ACLU attorney Catherine Crump said in the blog post. "People are entitled to private lives. You'd be appalled if your employer insisted on opening up your postal mail to see if there was anything of interest inside. It's equally out of bounds for an employer to go on a fishing expedition through a person's private social media account."

The AP noted that legislation has been proposed in both Maryland and Illinois banning employers from asking for access to candidate's social profiles, and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on Wednesday told Politico that he's writing a federal bill to ban the practice.

"I am very deeply troubled by the practices that seem to be spreading voraciously around the country," he said, adding that an "employer has a lot of ways to find out information" about candidates.

Collins has also taken his story to NPR's All Things Considered, adding to the mounting pressure to put a stop the practice altogether.

Do you think shoulder surfing is an invasion of privacy? Have you ever been asked to share your Facebook password with your employer? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Leslie Horn joined the PCMag team as a news reporter in the fall of 2010. She covers a wide range of topics from digital media to the latest Apple rumor. After graduating with a degree in Magazine Journalism from the University of Missouri, she wrote for Out & About, a travel guide in coastal Maine. One of her favorite reporting experiences was covering the 2008 Olympics from Beijing. She travels every chance she gets, and recently spent time backpacking along the coast of Brazil. Though she...
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